There's an old adage on Wall Street, "The trend is your friend". The same can be said for franchises and the customers they are trying to attract. Wayne Huizenga, owner of the Miami Dolphins, is a brilliant business man worth billions of dollars. When building his Blockbuster video chain in the 1980s, he was unaware that the 1990s would usher in a new and deadly competitor called the internet. Services such as in-home and on-demand movie ordering services, along with Netflix, Redbox and others would soon spell doom for Blockbuster - which eventually took Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010.
Creating an exciting email newsletter can be an affordable and easy way to communicate with your customers on a regular basis. And if done right, it's also a great way to build trust, generate excitement, and potentially encourage customers to frequently utilize the services your business provides. However, if an email newsletter isn't done properly, it might end up being an annoyance to your customer. So what do you do? Before you begin creating that Newsletter make sure you have included the following 4 "Musts" in your process!
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When you are looking for a franchise to buy, there's a lot of due diligence that needs to be done. One of the things that I would recommend that you look for is current franchisees who are opening up additional locations. When a franchisee is opening up additional units it tells you a couple of things, number one is that there's a very high likelihood that they are either making money with their first location or they feel comfortable with the support and training that they are getting and the trajectory that they are on to continue to expand. Scalability is one of the most important elements of franchise success and opening additional units is a great sign of scalability. Multi-unit owners are really important in franchise systems that don’t have a 10 or 20 year track record. Everyone knows that McDonalds, Taco Bell and Subway have expandable and scalable systems, but if you are buying into a newer franchise system the importance of multi-unit owners is magnified. A lot of this relates back to the issues that I have mentioned previously, namely a proven track record and the support and training that you receive from your franchisor. With everyone looking for a new and exciting franchise opportunity, looking for franchise systems where franchisees are opening up additional units is a great place to begin your search!
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Collecting customer feedback is an important way to gauge whether the efforts you are putting into growing your small business are really meeting the needs and expectations of your customers. Following are some different ways that customer feedback might be gained, as well as some helpful tips and useful questions you might want to ask.
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Despite franchising being a safer way of doing business, it doesn't mean that it's risk free! Because of this, it's important when researching franchises to carefully look at your options, and find out which franchise systems could cause you major problems over the long run - and which franchise systems will provide you with a great formula for franchise success! Below are some of the top problem areas in why a franchise might struggle.
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